School councils, parental participation and school effects: what works?

Session Submission Type: Group Panel

Description of Session

This panel seeks to explore the role of schools and parents in improving educational outcomes in low-income settings. All three papers contribute to the growing body of research on school effects, school-based-management, and parental involvement in schools. The first paper examines the role of school councils (SCs), comprised of the head-teacher, parents, and community members, within the school-based management framework in Pakistan. It analyzes whether inactive SCs can be mobilized using Information & Communication Technology (ICT) to proactively engage them in school governance and improve school inputs. The program being evaluated has a call-center being used by the state to call SC members to inform them of their roles and responsibilities with the aim of improving school inputs. The second paper explores the relationship between school autonomy and learning outcomes in Indonesia. By exploiting variations in school councils’ de facto decision-making power and rates of parental participation across secondary schools, this paper asks whether school autonomy and parental involvement matter for educational achievement and equity. The third paper explores school effects in transitions from upper secondary education to higher education and the labor market in Mexico, using educational achievement as a mediator. The panel is motivated by a desire to understand how school management, parental participation, and classroom characteristics can improve school inputs, educational achievement, and youth transitions to the labor market.

The authors endeavor to understand how schools and communities can overcome socioeconomic barriers to educational achievement in low income contexts. The first two studies will disentangle the relationships between local school governance, parental participation and educational outcomes in order to analyze the mechanisms through which school-based-management can improve school inputs and quality. Both papers explore whether (and under what conditions) school-based-management empowers parents to collaborate with teachers and school administrators to improve school quality. The third paper seeks to understand how school effects can help reduce the gaps in educational achievement that originate from family background, and, as a consequence, affect transitions from upper secondary education to the labor market and higher education.

All three papers use quantitative methodologies to estimate the relationship between school characteristics and educational outcomes. The first study will use quasi experimental methodologies to assess the impact of mobilizing school councils through scheduled phone-calls by the state (through a call center) to improve school inputs in Pakistan. This paper will use a provincial-level data-set collected by the government of Punjab in Pakistan to monitor school inputs. The second paper will employ multilevel statistical models to explore the relationship between school council’s decision-making power, parental involvement in schools and educational achievement (test scores) in Indonesia, using 2012 PISA data. The third study will use a hierarchical linear model using educational achievement as a mediator of the effects that schools have on outcomes in the transitions from upper secondary education. They combine literature on the education production function, school effects, social capital, and school-based-management, looking at issues of school quality, educational achievement, and educational equity through the lens of economics. Together, all three papers will inform educational development policy - contributing to an understanding of how classroom characteristics and school governance models can improve educational inputs and outcomes in low-income contexts.

Sub Unit

• General Pool

Chair

• Jane Leer, Stanford Graduate School of Education

Individual Presentations

• Impact of using Information & Communication Technology to Mobilize School Council Members to Proactively Improve School Governance and Performance - Minahil Asim, Stanford University

• School Autonomy, Parental Involvement in Schools, and Learning in Indonesia - Jane Leer, Stanford Graduate School of Education

• School Effects in the Transitions from Upper Secondary Education - Mariana Barragan, Stanford University

Discussant

• Prashant Loyalka, Freeman Spogli Institute, Stanford University